Department of Slips and Falls: Add Craig in Rodeo on Thursday night. He also lost his orange bandanna, which had to be kicked offstage by two other dancers. I'm dismayed to read of the others that occurred on Friday and Saturday (I did not attend these performances, alas), especially Cornejo's . Recall that he was out of commission all last summer with an injury. So who is to blame for preparing a slippery stage floor at City Center?

Well Cornejo had no visible slip nor fall. We have no idea what happened so perhaps we should not (yet) assign blame for his injury at least to a slippery floor.

For what it is worth, the only issues I saw in 2 performances were a few minor partnering flubs, which did not seem slippery floor related.

Also what summer are you thinking of? Cornejo certainly danced last summer.

Just to add my two cents' worth....I thought that Cory Stearns, who to my mind is George Clooney-gorgeous and has a beautiful ballet line, but who has disappointed me up to now in the acting department, was magnificent in The Moor's Pavane on Saturday night. Macaulay noted in today's New York Times that Cory seems to be animated in roles with "a streak of malice," which may well be the case, although up close he looks like your very sweet boy-next-door. In Moor, however, his body was infinitely expressive, and I had to force myself to take my eyes off him to watch the others. In a word, I found him riveting. Now, if he could bring that expressive intensity to his more princely roles, he will have almost no peer in the princely department and I won't have to choose between seeing David with a lesser ballerina or Veronika with a bland partner. Veronika already dances with unequaled eloquence; what she needs is a partnership made in heaven.

Aurora: 2011. That was last summer. If I meant 2012 I would have written "this past summer."

Angelica: I'm no great admirer of Cory but I agree with you about him in Pavane. The only other time I felt he wasn't a cipher onstage was in Shadowplay, as the bare-chested god, or shaman, or whatever the character represents, which required him to look forbidding and sinister.

Aurora: 2011. That was last summer. If I meant 2012 I would have written "this past summer."

Thank you for teaching me the proper uses of these terms. I could have easily called the summer season 2012 either last summer or "this past summer" as either would have seemed equally appropriate to me. Now I know better.

I saw the Saturday night program which sadly was the only program I saw.

Saturday evening October 20:

Symphony #9 (Alexei Ratmansky):I think this is the best work that Ratmansky has done so far at ABT and I can't wait to see what he does with the other two pieces and how it all shapes up as a whole. The cast was Roberto Bolle and Veronika Part as the main, serious couple with Sascha Radetsky and a gorgeous Stella Abrera as the other, lighthearted couple with Jared Matthews as the lone jumping male dancer. Like Balanchine, Ratmansky has used different groups of dancers to embody certain emotions or themes in the music. We see the more joyous assertive Radetsky/Abrera couple leading the corps in various formations. The serious couple, Bolle and Part look on in wonderment at their self-confidence and exuberance. They tentatively take the stage and dance a searching, meditative pas de deux. The groups alternate with the Part and Bolle couple seeming to gain a sense of their own place in this group. It seems to end in mid-sentence but on a positive note - again one has to see where this fits in the larger, full-evening work. I don't know if this is the first, second or third piece in the work. It feels like either a beginning or middle section. Many people who had seen both casts preferred Part to Semionova though Tobi Tobias felt that Part was soap opera emoting and over the top. I loved Part's warmth and felt that she gave an emotional center to the piece. BTW: about injuries and slippery falls - one of the corps girls (Isabella Loyola? hard to tell they all had identical hairstyles and dresses) slipped and fell badly but recovered after a few moments. So maybe there is a problem with the floor there.

The Moor's Pavane (José Limon):I saw this piece done by the New York Theatre Ballet last year at Florence Gould Hall on a small stage with pre-recorded music. It was very interesting to see it done in a larger theater with live music (and a dream cast). The choreography uses real Renaissance dances and groupings to tell the story in a primal, stripped down fashion. It is quite effective even in a large space. Marcelo Gomes I knew had the emotional range for the Othello role since he has already done the part superbly in Lar Lubovitch's version (I saw him with Alessandra Ferri's lovely Desdemona in her last season at ABT). Julie Kent looked lovely and her elegant lyricism is perfect for the role - I was high up in the balcony and she didn't look too mature to me. There is no pointe work here and she probably is overqualified technically for the piece - interpretively I found her ideal. Veronika Part returned as the Friend's Wife (the Emilia figure) looking voluptuous and decadent in a scarlet gown. The role of Emilia is more complicit in this version than she is in the play seeming to be a rather amoral but not malicious voluptuary. Part made it clear when the story turned to murder and betrayal that she felt used and wronged by the turn of events. Cory Stearns did some of the best acting I have seen from him. I think that he needs careful coaching and the stager from the Limon Foundation, Clay Taliaferro did a wonderful job with him. He was wonderfully subtle and insinuating.

In the Upper Room (Twyla Tharp): Cornejo was injured so Craig Salstein stepped in for him and a joyous Eric Tamm replaced Salstein in his track. Luciana Paris replaced Kristi Boone as one of the "Stomping Girls in Sneakers". This piece is a real audience pleaser. Sascha Radetsky once told me when I spoke to him on the street that he loves this ballet and he gave a wonderful performance (by the way his tattoos were covered by a concealer makeup though other dancers were proudly displaying theirs). Simone Messmer was a revelation as the other "Stomping Girl in Sneakers" - she didn't look like a classical ballerina at all - compare this with her magnificently danced Gamzatti this past summer! Like any front-rank ABT ballerina she covers a wide gamut of styles. I endorse the description of her as having a "Kurt Weill" quality. Isabella Boylston danced the main "Ballerina girl in red pointe shoes and leg warmers" role that Paloma Herrera (not dancing this engagement) has done so well with in the past. Boylston really seemed in her element as a modern ballerina and owned the stage. Salstein had a few bad moments partnering Messmer in some tricky lifts and catches but I suspect that is was unfamiliarity as they probably hadn't rehearsed it together. Otherwise Craig was great as was Arron Scott and all the men. The piece does drag a bit in the middle but is a great "Big Finish" for a mixed bill. The audience was shouting and stomping at the end.

If it's fall, I never know what people mean by "last summer," and I usually wuss out and say "summer X" or avoid it altogether, but this clarifies usage.

Actually it doesn't. I was being sarcastic in my previous post. I don't think specifying the year is wussing out, it is being clear, which is a good thing.

As it isn't a single word "last summer" is hard to look it up, but for example allwords.com (which I would hardly call definitive) states:

In the summer before the current or upcoming one.

Which would therefore be 2012.

I think the phrase is intrinsically unclear and could reasonably be taken either way. I just resented the implication my lack of comprehension as to what year was meant was due to some deficiency on my part, when in fact the phrase is unclear.

Can't we let go of this, Ms. PhD in the Humanities? I THOUGHT I was apologizing. Helene, if this exchange strikes you as uncivil, accept my apology too, and please feel free to delete any or all of it.

Can't we let go of this, Ms. PhD in the Humanities? I THOUGHT I was apologizing. Helene, if this exchange strikes you as uncivil, accept my apology too, and please feel free to delete any or all of it.

Shoot! I think the whole thing should be deleted. I was just trying to say, as Helene was saying she now understood a grammatical point, based on our quibble, that it wasn't so cut and dry.But i got caught up in proving the point. I wasn't trying to extend the argument. Trees...forest....bah

I am sorry about the stupid Phd comment too (You may have noticed, *I* deleted that one)

It seems to end in mid-sentence but on a positive note - again one has to see where this fits in the larger, full-evening work. I don't know if this is the first, second or third piece in the work. It feels like either a beginning or middle section.

Back to ABT.

Based on what I saw in Symphony #9, I'd have to imagine that the likely order of the Shostakovich cycle will be chronological: Symphony #1, Symphony #9, & the Op. 110a (a.k.a. String Quartet No. 8). Initially, I thought that the Op. 110a would make a good middle ("adagio" in a very loose sense) movement. But in Symphony #9, Ratmansky appears to be gesturing toward a kind of submerged political/historical narrative (as Marina Harss discusses in her blog post here) that's reflective of Shostakovich's own public/private discourse.

Like the score itself, Ratmansky's choreography appears to deconstruct the experience of war, contrasting the public euphoria and hollow triumph of "victory" with private tragedy and unspoken pain. To me, we saw this in microcosm in the 4th movement, with the expansive movements (for the Gomes character) set to the brass unison, which are contrasted with the involuted, intimate, almost furtive duet (for the Gomes-Seminonova pairing) set to the haunting, lonely bassoon solo.

Concluding with the cycle with the brooding intensity and bleak tragedy of the Op. 110a seems to offer Ratmansky an epic personal/historical sweep that would be devastating. "Seeing the music" is such a cliche, but I'll never be able to listen to the Ninth Symphony again without recalling, in my mind's eye, some of the more striking passages in the ballet. And if Ratmansky is intent upon continuing to mine Shostakovich's own tortured personal history, set against a broader, if coded, historical narrative, as reflected in the music, well, I simply can't wait for the rest of the trilogy.

I would love to see somebody (perhaps for a Master's thesis?) compare Stravinsky's Symphony in 3 Movements and Shostakovich's Symphony #9 and, in turn, how Balanchine and Ratmansky choreographed them so we could "see the music." Both pieces of music were written right after the end of WWII, although in dramatically different circumstances, of course.